Sorry for any friends who saw this in rough draft form. I'm still learning all the ins and outs of DW and how to cross-post to LJ. Name on DW: same as here ( Read more... )

Like many others on my friends list, I will shortly be moving to Dreamwidth. I hope to keep my same name or something similar. I'll post it on LJ when I've made the move. In the meantime, this is what I've been reading ( Read more... )

"Everfair" by Nisi Shawl, a steampunk fantasy novel set mostly in the Congo during the time of King Leopold's reign (late 1800s to early 1900s). In our real history, Leopold was a monster, forcing native people to work for free harvesting rubber to enrich Belgium, kidnapping famlies to keep workers in line and punishing those who rebelled by ( Read more... )

Feeling a little sad that the orange tabby cat in my icon has now passed away. Maybe I'll have to make a new one where I'm reading with our other cat, Bitsy ( Read more... )

"Foulsham," the 2nd book in the Iremonger trilogy by Edward Carey. The series is set in an alternate Victorian-era London, where the Iremongers are a family that lives in "The Heaps," a walled off part of the city that is home to London's trash, and all have "birth objects" that come from the heaps. Clod Iremonger can hear the voices of objects and ( Read more... )

"The Intuitionist" by Colson Whitehead. The novel is set in an alternate universe during a time when elevators and the Elevator Inspectors Guild are a huge influence in big cities, when black people are still called "colored" and integration is still a novel idea. Lila Mae Watson is the first black and female elevator inspector. She only wants to ( Read more... )

"Heap House," the first in the Iremonger trilogy by Edward Carey. This is a fun, illustrated YA novel set in an alternative reality/fantasy London. The Iremonger family lives in Heap House, a mansion made of refuse and surrounded by monstrous "Heaps" of trash from London. Lucy Pennant arrives at the house as a new servant and encounters Clod, an ( Read more... )

"Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored" by Mary Gabriel. Victoria Claflin Woodhull was the first woman to run for president (with Frederick Douglass as her running mate). She was the first woman to address the U.S. Congress and to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street. She also came from a fairly shady family and was a ( Read more... )

My goals for 2017 are ( Read more... )

My final book of the year, #89, was "Under the Tuscan Sun," a memoir by Frances Mayes. After the dissolution of her long marriage, she and her new boyfriend decide to buy an Italian villa and restore it to use as a summer/vacation home. She tells about the remodeling process, the history of the Tuscan country-side, and the best peasant dishes she ( Read more... )